Babakina festiva (Roller, 1972)

Babakina festiva

No field photograph submitted for this species yet

Description

A strikingly colored aeolid, 20-28 mm long. The head region and sides of the foot are pinkish-red, with lighter pink around the cardiac elevation. About 22 oblique rows of 2-3 fusiform cerata line each side of the body. The rhinophores are unusual: their proximal third is fused into a common stalk, while the upper portion bears a bulbous, perfoliate club of about 35 leaves overlaid with yellow-orange pigment. The cerata are vividly banded - pinkish-red in the proximal half, then a broad opaque white band, then a narrow cadmium yellow-orange ring, with a translucent greyish tip.

Distribution

Southern California coast, USA, from Malibu Reef to La Jolla. The type locality is White's Point, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Los Angeles County, California, collected intertidally beneath rocks.

Etymology

From Latin festivus (festive), feminine form festiva. Roller did not give an explicit etymology in the original description.

Remarks

A 1972 paper originally erected a new genus and new family for this species. The original genus name Babaina proved to be a junior homonym of Babaina Odhner, 1968, and a 1973 paper introduced Babakina as a replacement name. The genus honours the Japanese malacologist Kikutaro Baba, with Roller acknowledging "his more than 40 years of dedicated work with Opisthobranchia and his many kindnesses to the author."
For decades, Indo-West Pacific specimens (including those from Honshu, Japan, mentioned in the original paper) were also referred to Babakina festiva. Gosliner, Gonzáles-Duarte & Cervera 2007 revised the genus and split off the Indo-Pacific population as a separate species, Babakina indopacifica, restricting Babakina festiva to the northeastern Pacific coast of California. The same revision elevated Babakinidae to family rank, with Babakina as its sole genus.